Algeny
by shallowords
Summary: A chain of events sets Amy Dallon on a different path as she tries to get a handle on her life. But with terrible risks come incredible rewards, and Panacea will not be denied her answers. OP Amy
1. Chapter 1 : Resolve

Disclaimers:

1) This story is set in the Wormverse, which is owned by Wildbow. Thanks for letting me use it.

2) I will follow canon as closely as I can. However it's been a long time since I've read Worm, don't hesitate to correct me.

3) This disclaimer is shamelessly plagiarized from ack1308. Literally nothing here is original. Really.

Edit : Sorry for the initial formatting, I apparently uploaded it wrong.

I-I-I

A nine year old Amy Dallon was sniffling on her bed. She had let her older sister Victoria cheat and copy her own answers on a math exam. She had not been discreet and had been caught. She snorted at the thought.

 _Ha! Vicky. Discreet!_

She had given their parents the letter from their teacher during the dinner. Their mother had yelled at her and sent her to her room without dessert! She had not protested at the unfairness of it all, she had just silently gone up the stairs. Yet it didn't prevent the thoughts twirling in her head.

Why was _she_ being punished? How had she done anything wrong? Well, yeah, the teacher told her that she was guilty as much as her sister, and she still wasn't convinced, but that was different! Why was she the _only_ one punished?

Of course, sniffling on the other bed in the room, sat Vicky. Try as she might, she couldn't find it in her to blame her sister for that mess.

It would have been easy to convince herself that it was entirely her fault. It would have been even easier to resent her for the blatant favoritism their mother showed toward her sister.

Yet she couldn't. Her mother might not have punished Vicky, but the oblivious girl had instantly assumed that the words had been for the both of them. How she could have understood that, Amy didn't know.

 _I will not have you lead my daughter into a life of crime!_ , their mother had said.

Without a broader context, it might have been directed to any of them, but not _both_! With the knowledge of the suspicious looks she had received from her all her childhood, it was obviously aimed at her personally.

Plus, Carol had been staring directly at her.

But no, the lovable idiot couldn't conceive such unfairness, let alone take advantage of it.

Perhaps she could still manage to muster some resentment for her sister? Give her the silent treatment for a little while?

She took a shaky breath, and sighed as she lowered her head. A noise made her look up suddenly, and all she saw was a flurry of blond hair before she was tackled into a hug, falling back on her pillow.

"I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry!" Vicky chanted, sobbing into her shoulder.

Well, so much for that idea… She felt her heart melt, and she returned the hug.

Her life wasn't _entirely_ terrible, she supposed.

I-I-I

Later that night, staring at the ceiling, she had a thought. Her mother believed she was going to lead her sister into a life of crime? Ha! Joke's on her.

She huffed in indignation.

That did it! She was going to be a _doctor_! The best frigging doctor in the United States. She would cure cancer and everyone would admire her ! And then she would get a medal for all the awesome things she had done, and her family would show up at the ceremony with the president, and then, her mother would admit that she had been wrong all those years, and Amy would tell her it had all begun tonight, and she would answer that she didn't mean it, and that she was proud of her.

She smirked, eyes closed, eyelids fluttering in her pleasant half dream.

That sounded like a plan…

I-I-I

 _Four year later._

"Ames, come on, we're going to be late for the shopping trip to Boardwalk with aunt Sarah!"

"Give me a second, Vicky, I just need to finish this chapter… If I stop here I'll waste a lot more time coming back to it later."

"What are you even reading? Maxwell's equations and the principles of electromagnetism?! Is that doctor stuff? It doesn't sound like doctor stuff! Why are you reading it if it's not doctor stuff?"

"Well, sis, I've read a lot of doctor stuff," Amy answered, indignantly stressing the word stuff, "and while it's not necessary to understand the underlying physics principles, it's very interesting. I mean, electromagnetism is used everywhere, from electric systems to MRI to-"

"Okay STOP, forget I asked, just GET DRESSED ALREADY!"

Amy sighed, looked mournfully at her unfinished chapter, sighed again, and marked her progress with an old postcard before putting her book down on her desk, next to a copy of "An introduction to differential equations for college students".

She then looked up at her sister who was currently attempting to merge her face into the window as she expectantly watched the street for aunt Sarah's arrival.

"Alright, let me grab a pair of jeans and we'll go and wait for her on the sidewalk."

"Yay!" Vicky answered before rushing down the stairs.

Amy smiled in amusement as she opened the closet and got dressed. The few teachers that had caught her reading college level material thought her a genius already. How much more impressed would they be if they realized she got that kind of work down despite sharing a room with Vicky?

She chuckled as she started do go down the stairs, hearing a car park in the street followed by an immediate squeal of excitement.

I-I-I

Later that night she contemplated her achievements. She was deeply proud of what she had accomplished over the last four years.

Yes, it had started as a childish dream, she had quickly realized that. She had just picked the medical field because doctors _helped_ , therefore if she became a doctor, people would be forced to acknowledge that she was a good girl.

But that dream, and the lack of approval from Carol had sustained her intensive personal studies for long enough. By the time that this drive had waned, as Amy finally accepted she might never earn the woman's love, she had started to like learning for its own sake!

So she kept going.

Perhaps it would have been different if she had not picked medicine. After all, biology was a breeze for her, but math and physics were _hard_. Just try teaching yourself integration at the age of 10!

Thankfully, she had a strangely intuitive grasp of biology. It just clicked, and it gave her real-life problems to apply the other subjects to. She had to stay vigilant however, as her _insight_ pushed her to skip elementary yet vital material. Without a fundamental grasp of the basics, she could have been severely limited, and she couldn't help but notice the paradox of her _intuition_ of biology potentially crippling her mastery of it.

In less two years she had completed the science section high school syllabus. She had trained her own mind well enough that she could have easily breezed through the remaining subjects, but she decide instead to get started on college level science. Biology had been her catalyst, and she didn't want to risk losing her motivation!

Her parents had not been particularly supportive of her, Carol being Carol, and dad being depressed. They had heard enough about her ambition to become a doctor to not be particularly alarmed either by her studious attitude.

Of course, they didn't realize that her interest had broadened to biology in general, and even other scientific fields. It was, after all, very convenient to distract and bore Carol with a long overly enthusiastic account of all the "doctor stuff" she had learned recently when the woman got into one of her moods.

Vicky knew, of course. She wasn't jealous (although that might have been because she was currently shining in sports and had just been accepted into the school's basketball team). On the contrary, she had been the one to convince her to ask Aunt Sarah's help in getting second hand college books.

So here she was, 13 year old, with piles of knowledge that reassured her that she could do anything, and no longer craving for Carol's approval (and no longer calling her Mom either). She was going to make something of herself, she could feel it.

That was, if she could survive the boredom of Vicky's basketball match tomorrow...


	2. Chapter 2 : Diary

Disclaimers:

1) This story is set in the Wormverse, which is owned by Wildbow. Thanks for letting me use it.

2) I will follow canon as closely as I can. However it's been a long time since I've read Worm, don't hesitate to correct me.

3) This disclaimer is shamelessly plagiarized from ack1308. Literally nothing here is original. Really.

I-I-I-I

 _Amy Dallon's diary, February 12th 2009_

So.

Vicky triggered at that basketball match when she felt cheated by the referee.

Great.

Just great. I hope she's not gonna get hurt when she joins New Wave.

I-I-I-I

 _Amy Dallon's diary, February 14th 2009_

Oh God, I thought she was hyper before, now she's flying everywhere.

She broke her closet door.

I'm just glad we don't sleep in the same room anymore, her aura is a problem. Even from here, I can feel it.

Well, it doesn't matter anyway! I mean I love her already, there's no way that loving her more could possibly be an issue!

I just have one question for whoever is responsible for dispatching powers to people : Why would she possibly need more charisma than she already had?

Oh! I know! It might be so that people let her off the hook when she flies through their walls.

I-I-I-I

 _Amy Dallon's diary, March 14th 2009_

Dammit! Vicky got hurt! I thought she was invulnerable!

I have to focus more on the doctor stuff, and quickly. New Wave is not safe for an airhead like her.

Is it safe from anyone, I wonder… I mean, I don't have powers. What if people try to get at them through me? No, wait let's focus on Vicky.

I-I-I-I

 _Amy Dallon's diary, March 15th 2009_

Signed up for a self defense class as well as a first aid class. Also, convinced Sarah to help me find a way to get actual medical training early.

I-I-I-I

 _Amy Dallon's diary, March 29th 2009_

Vicky got hurt again. She wasn't even supposed to be out there! And she got badly hurt. When I saw it, I panicked. What good was all my knowledge when I had no way to use it? My only significant practical experience was first aid.

She wasn't dying, I knew that much form what the doctor said. But I was terrified anyway. And I childishly hated my self for not being able to do anything.

As I was standing by her bed, watching her, asleep and in pain, kept alive by machines, I took her hand in mine. It was strange seeing her pale and devoid of energy.

And I triggered.

I don't know how I feel about that.

Good, I suppose, because, a few seconds afterwards, Vicky was waking up without a scratch on her.

Yes, it's absolutely amazing that I can heal her! But the thing that awoke in me, the thing that allows me to help her, it also lets me know exactly what was wrong and how to fix it. Instantly! Like everything I had learned before and anything I could possibly learn in the future is useless.

It feels strangely similar to the insight I had in my study of biology. Is it connected? I will have to investigate that further.

It feels insidious. The temptation not to bother with the basic medical stuff is overwhelming. Before, I merely wanted to skip ahead to get to the interesting parts. Now, I have an irrational certitude that there is nothing left for me to learn. And yet I know otherwise. I don't understand how I healed Vicky, I don't fully understand how what I've done has made her healthy.

I'm stronger than that. I've tamed my insight, and I will tame my power in the same manner. Make no mistake, I will not neglect it. I will use and abuse it. As my insight was, it will be a drive and a tool. Just not a crutch.

I will learn, and I will understand.

Although I will have to be careful. After all, the world is still reeling from Nilbog, and Blasto is still wreaking havoc in Brockton Bay.

I-I-I-I

 _Amy Dallon's diary, March 30th 2009_

Carol wants me to volunteer at the local hospital. I'm not sure I want to. Sure I want to help, but there are problems with that.

I wanted to be a doctor a few years ago. Could I still be that if I give freely my time? I know I have a responsibility to help, but I'm not going to be a selfless saint. I couldn't if I wanted to. It's just not who I am.

I don't want to give all my time for free, to people who might not appreciate it, forever. It's a slippery slope. People are indifferent to me right now. If I start healing everyone, if I stop a few years afterwards they will hate me.

Besides, I've read a lot about hospital life. Regular doctors and nurses have frequent burnouts, especially those who can't pace themselves. What about somebody who can heal anyone, but who will never have enough time to heal everyone?

Recipe for disaster, I'm telling you.

I need a plan. And I need to find out what I can do.


	3. Chapter 3 : Strategy

Disclaimers:

1) This story is set in the Wormverse, which is owned by Wildbow. Thanks for letting me use it.

2) I will follow canon as closely as I can. However it's been a long time since I've read Worm, don't hesitate to correct me.

3) This disclaimer is shamelessly plagiarized from ack1308. Literally nothing here is original. Really.

I-I-I-I

"What do you mean, you're not going to volunteer at the hospital?" Carol asked angrily. "Was all that phase about helping and being a doctor just another lie?"

Amy quelled the urge to strangle her. In a single sentence, Carol had jumped to the incorrect conclusion that she didn't want to help at all, belittled her childhood dream, and implied that she was a serial liar.

Fortunately she was ready for this. Carol might have just been finding out about it, but everyone else at the table had been prepared for that.

She had dragged her sister _and_ Eric and Crystal through half a season of TV show from Earth Aleph. That particular show had been about the life of the medical crew of a Seattle hospital. Why she didn't feel the need to drag everyone through the entire season? Because she didn't actually like the show ( _way too many inaccuracies_!) and the particularly emphasized burnout of one of the leads had happened mid-season. Therefore what followed was useless, and even counterproductive to her aim as the character in question got over it unrealistically fast.

To lay it particularly thick, she had even stated she was no longer interested in the show _because_ the burnout had perturbed her. Her cousins had been pensive, Eric with a somewhat knowing look in his eyes. Vicky had been horrified.

Yes, it had been somewhat manipulative. However, she _was_ genuinely concerned about that, and she would not have been forced to do this if Carol wasn't, well, Carol. If anything, the harsh words she was uttering were helping sooth Amy's guilty conscience.

A few days afterwards, she had mentioned it to Sarah. As her aunt had been the one in the know of the actual extent of her academic prowess, it had been relatively easy to broach the subject. She had simply asked for a copy of "Preventing Physician Burnout", and talked with her aunt when she got the book for her. That in particular was not even underhanded. Amy knew she wanted to help people, and that the responsibility of her power would crush her if she wasn't careful. She genuinely wanted to read the book.

Aunt Sarah was likely to have talked about it with her husband. As for Dad, well, it was even easier. She had thought that he would be the least likely to be able to help her. After thinking about it for a while, she had thought that his depression might be a simple opening for the topic, if she could muster the courage to broach that subject with him.

Finally bringing it up with him turned her world upside down. As a child, she had felt disappointed by his lack of energy. As an adult in spirit, she was impressed by him.

She had not imagined that someone as passive and devastated as him would have wisdom to offer, compared to the rest of the family who seemed so much more full of life. She had been wrong, and in hindsight, she should have seen it coming. The topic was burnout, helplessness, and depression, after all. She had expected a five minutes dialogue, and she had ended up spending the entire day talking to him. Even Carol and Vicky had opted not to interrupt them, going out to the Boardwalk instead, all the while giving the two of them puzzled glances.

Suffice to say, the deck was fully stacked against Carol. If she expected the rest of the family to support, or even simply tolerate her callous words, she was in for a surprise.

"Well, what do you have to say for yourself? We raise you better than to be _that_ selfish and self centered," Carol went on.

"Okay, let's stay calm and collected," Sarah interrupted. "There are, after all, real concerns about this."

Carol gaped at her sister.

"What do you mean, concerns? Would you have her deny healing? Let people in the hospital not even a mile from here suffer because she's entered her rebellious phase?"

Victoria snorted in answer. "Amy, rebellious! Ha! That'll be the day! Give her some credit, Mom, isn't it, like, the first time _ever_ that she has stood up to you?"

"Quiet Victoria, this is not the point," Carol seethed.

 _Well if it isn't, then don't try to bring it up, Carol,_ Amy thought bitterly. _And if you do, don't blame us for debating it_.

"Back to the point, then," Sarah took over, "I think we all realize the problem with her volunteering so readily." She looked over the table at the rest of the family, subtly making it a new wave matter rather than a personal argument.

"Potential exploitation, the inevitable slippery slope of trying to save everyone, the risk of burnout..." Eric promptly listed.

Had he prepared for this? He winked at Amy. That settled it, he definitely had seen her coming. Best cousin ever! She owed him an apology for being underhanded about it, though. Chocolates?

"Also the fact that it effectively kills her career as a doctor." Vicky added solemnly. "She can't really justify billing patients for healing them a lot less efficiently than she does on her free time, after all."

 _What ? That's… surprisingly insightful…_ Amy pondered. Then she felt guilt at the thought. She tended to think of her sister as a generous but somewhat self centered airhead, and here she was finding out that she had been not only concerned about her, but had spent more time mulling over it than Amy had expected. The TV show made it easy to realize the dangers of burnout, but what Vicky had said meant that she had spent some time really considering it.

There was a brief silence in the room as everyone took it in. Carol looked speechless, and more than a little angry, but more likely at herself for looking like the person who had thought about it the least. Whether that stemmed from a fleeting realization that she was the one supposed to care for Amy, or just from the irritation at not being the smartest in the room, she didn't know.

"I have an idea!" Sarah exclaimed, eyes widening. "Amy, I've seen the kind of material you've studied. I've supplied most of it to you, after all. You've not only studied biology and medicine, but medical and hospital protocols as well. Do you think you're far from what it would take to be a nurse?"

"Oh !" Amy answered, seeing where this was going, and ignoring other's surprise at her advancement in her studies. "I was thinking more along the lines of an independent contract, but that's a really great idea! As for being a nurse, I have most of the theoretical knowledge, but there's a lot of practical stuff as well… Also, I haven't graduated high school!"

"I think that would work anyway," Carol said slowly.

Wait, _Carol_ was helping, now? Seriously? Was it her lawyer side acting up? That was going way better than Amy had imagined.

"People will be overjoyed to have a healer of her caliber and will fast track the required exceptional exemptions for her, once the PRT is done confirming that her powers work as she says. She just needs the theoretical knowledge to fully justify her status. If she can pass the corresponding exams, we would show that she was _already_ studying for it, perhaps with her teachers vouching for her. Perhaps imply that Amy got her powers _because_ of it..."

"And people will have to accept that," Sarah concluded. "She would be considered the ultimate doctor, with the legal status of a part time nurse. It would be understood that it's her job and not her destiny, that she could scale back anytime, that she needs to pace herself, that she needs holidays, and so on."

"How do we prevent the wealthy auctioning for her services ?" Neil asked his wife.

"Because she'll be paid according to her diploma as a nurse, by the hospital." Sarah answered. "And if there is corruption in the hospital, it will be easy to spot with all the attention it will receive."

"I'll look it up in the morning," Carol promised.

"Well, sounds like a plan, right sis ?" Vicky summed up happily and (carefully) punched her shoulder.

Amy remained speechless at how quickly the situation had escaped her. Had she gone over kill on the preparation? She looked around the table, and smiled softly. She could hardly complain about the result, after all. And maybe she would give everyone a little more credit next time.

 _Even to Carol_ , she briefly thought.

I-I-I-I

Getting the diploma was laughably easy, in the end. After the PRT had cleared her and been assured they would receive help form her as well, they were very helpful in getting the required exemptions. The local medical school want to give her a honorary doctor degree straight away, but she convinced her to help her get her registered nurse license instead after setting up a standard theory exam.

Carol and Sarah approved because it meant she had more legitimacy. Amy preferred it that way because "honorary" would have meant "because of her power" in her eyes.

She wanted to earn it, to learn what she needed to learn, to understand what she wanted to understand. Not having a doctor diploma also reminded her that she still had a long way to go. And she loved it.

She got started at the local hospital. As it turned out, two hours every other day and half a day on Saturday was the most she could do at her age while still at school, as per hospital guidelines. She was fine with that.

Using her power felt good.

First of all, healing people was great. She saw the most desperate of cases, and performed genuine miracles. Except on brains, of course. She had straight refused to operate on brains. Had she trusted her power, she would have been wondering about the ethics of it. As it was, she simply understood the brain a lot less than the rest of the body, and while she found it uncomfortable to let her power make up something for the rest of the body, she found it downright unthinkable to do the same for brains.

When she wasn't letting her power take over, it also made everything she had learned infinitely more rewarding. Doctors saw pictures in medical books, or samples through magnifying lenses, but she saw everything directly in real time. She saw lymphocytes attacking external organisms, she saw carbon monoxide preventing red cells from ferrying oxygen. She saw swellings diminish and repair themselves when she refused to let her ability simply reset everything. It was a doctor's wet dream. And she left every session with a thirst for more knowledge.

The final benefit of healing people at the hospital was that her power felt less restless, so to speak. She was still trying to study that phenomenon scientifically, but she felt that after a healing session, her contempt for acquiring limited, human medical knowledge was muted. As if her ability was satiated and quietly dozing off.

If she was right, her power wanted to be used.

If she was right, it was also barely satisfied with mere healing.

She would get to the bottom of this. She would study brains, she would study her power, and she would understand what she needed to understand.

The first step? Experimenting on bugs. After all, killing small animals was the hallmark of psychos, but killing spiders was a very primal female urge, right?

She chuckled evilly. The patient whose jaw she was currently fixing shivered under her hand.

Also, she needed a costume to separate Panacea from Amy Dallon, to provide even more safety and peace of mind for herself. And NOT the sexy nurse outfit that Vicky had suggested, dammit!


	4. Chapter 4 : It begins

Disclaimers:

1) This story is set in the Wormverse, which is owned by Wildbow. Thanks for letting me use it.

2) I will follow canon as closely as I can. However it's been a long time since I've read Worm, don't hesitate to correct me.

3) This disclaimer is shamelessly plagiarized from ack1308. Literally nothing here is original. Really.

I've just listened to an entire Muse album. It didn't help me write. I don't get why people say it does.

I-I-I-I

 _Amy Dallon's diary, April 18th 2009_

It's been two weeks since my shifts have started at the hospital. I have been recording my studying efficiency for the past ten days. I record the time it takes for me to write a thousand words essay, the time it takes me to make a series of random multiplications mentally, and the number of pages of "Brain and spinal cord plasticity" I can understand in an hour.

I then contrast the result I get the morning before a shift at the hospital, and the morning after a shift at the hospital (had to wake up at five to do that).

Dataset :

4 evening shifts, 3 regular school days

Temporary results : after a hospital shift :

\- Short mental calculus : slightly slower (Hypothesis H1 : more tired after a shift)

\- Essay (English class) : about the same (very variable, need more data)

\- Brain study : systematically faster (H2: power inhibits my learning when it has not been activated for a while) (alternative hypothesis H3: power facilitates my study after use)

Conclusion :

\- I need more data to fully confirm H1 and (H2 or H3)

\- I need another other experiment to select H2 vs H3 (intuition in favor of H2)

I-I-I-I

"Come here little spider," Amy whispered as she brought her finger closer to the spider. She couldn't catch it without risking crushing it. She needed the thing to get on her finger on its own (ew).

The chair tilted dangerously under her feet.

"Come on, hurry!" She hissed. She didn't want to get caught capturing spiders (way to look creepy, Ames), and she didn't want to chicken out. Turns out, the ability to alter spiders didn't make her any fonder of the tiny creatures with too many legs.

"Yes! got you!"

She quickly got down from the chair and observed her little passenger..

"Now, how to stop you from moving… Ah ! That should do it"

She locked the spiders articulation in place. It started spasming. She yelped and threw it away from her, and then crushed her under her feet.

"God damn it! Now I have to get another! Get a grip on yourself, stupid girl!"

After a few more tries, she finally got a spider immobilized on her finger. The need to hurry finally gone, she took a deep breath and calmed down. She sat down on the floor, cross legged, and closed her eyes. The spider wouldn't escape, and no one suddenly barging in would notice it.

She started to really examine the spider's body. Unbidden, thoughts of improvements and modifications rushed through her head, as if her power had sensed the opportunity. She ruthlessly squashed them, even as she felt a painful and foreign pressure growing in her mind. She did not yield, and after a while she was finally capable of examining the spider calmly.

She did have the beginnings of a migraine, however. _Some_ _one_ _is eager,_ she thought, _and I doubt it's the spider_. Something else to watch out for, she supposed, and another reason to use her power carefully.

She tried to memorize the anatomy of the spider, to understand it, and compare it to the human one and to what she had retained from her foray into other fields of biology.

Once again, knowledge that she shouldn't have came to her, for instance information about the resistance of its thread or the strength of its muscles. And how to improve those. But it was too advanced for her current self, it was useless to her. She refused to make modifications that she didn't understand! She refused to be goaded into letting her ability do the heavy lifting. It was the principle of the matter.

Her headache intensified, but she didn't let up. She directed her mind toward the improvement of the strength of a single leg muscle. Schematics came to her instantly. She didn't let her power take over however,, but she started to quiz herself on what to improve specifically to get the same result. She would have to start with upgrading the muscle fiber resistance as a first step, she supposed.

Almost grudgingly, an image of how to achieve that came to her, and she could suddenly clearly spot it in the broader schematics that she had previously received.

"Now we're getting somewhere!" Amy whispered. "Unfortunately, I don't really understand how that modification would preserve a sufficient oxygen supply… You wouldn't have an idea about that, would you?"

Her headache spiked. She remained silent as she got up, fetched a glass of water and an painkiller, and sat back down on the floor. Immobile. Expectantly.

Slowly, very slowly, another image formed in her mind. She grinned.

Amy : 1 / Power : 0

I-I-I-I

It had been a month and a half since she had started her shifts at the hospital. She had settled into a comfortable routine.

Every morning she woke up as early as five am. She sneaked downstairs to make herself a cup of coffee, and then got started on her usual timed exercises : mental calculus, essay writing, and biology studies.

Primarily, it was a way to acquire data to examine the impact of her powers on her state of mind. She already had a strong case to confirm that neglecting her ability caused her to be less analytical, and more easily distracted. She had started to probe whether indulging her power too much had the same effect.

Of course, those exercises had the added benefit of helping her make great strides in her studies. She was getting ever faster at mental calculus, and her short term memories had started to hit record performances. She used the History and English syllabus to find themes for her essays, and she had even managed to turn some of them in to get better marks in her regular classes. And in a mere month, she had learned enough about the brain that she felt she might start helping neuronal tissues recover from obvious damage.

At around 7.30, she had breakfast with the rest of the family. Surprisingly, Carol had made an effort to be more civil to her, attempting to greet her somewhat warmly, by having a cup of coffee ready for her, for instance. Amy had decided to stop trying to understand what went through the woman's head, and just enjoyed the lack of hostility.

Then classes began. As she had acquired a reputation among the teachers, first as an undercover genius, then as a miraculous healer, she was mostly left to her own devices as long as she got good grades and didn't disturb the rest of the class.

So she spent her time studying medicine and engineering, maths and biology, physics and ethics. Yes, she did say _ethics_. If she was right, she would need all the help she could get in that area, as her power was a direct gateway to trans-humanism as well as bio tinkering of all kind. She figured that at some point, her current policy of "Human healing – No brain – Experiment on spiders only" would be too restrictive. She might have to ditch it in times of crisis, and she wanted a better fall back position than "Use power : yes".

In the evening, she either studied more, or went for a two hours shift at the hospital depending on the day. Then she had dinner with Dad and Vicky (Carol got home later), and afterwards she made sure to spend time with Vicky, chatting and gossiping. She would have kept studying, but she felt it might have been unhealthy. She had plans to take up a hobby fully unrelated to her work. A way to clear her mind and find some perspective. Music, perhaps ?

Right before getting to bed, she often worked on her spiders. It was a painful and laborious process, yet infinitely rewarding. She consolidated all of her knowledge in those sessions. It even helped her apply her physics and math skills, calculating volumes with integrals, or mechanical stress on the spider legs, and then checking the correct answer with her power.

She had still not managed to entirely understand the muscle upgrade her power had suggested, but she was getting there, and it served as a guide for what college books she would study next. She knew that she would be a lot faster on her next project, so she didn't feel impatient. It usually left her with a debilitating headache, but those got a lot less virulent every time. She figured either her, or her power was starting to get used to those exercises.

Late in the night, as she lied in her bed, staring at the luminescent plastic star stuck to the ceiling, basking in the aura of her sister in the room right next to her, she dreamed of fighting end-bringers and saving the world.

She usually fell asleep with as smile.

I-I-I-I

"So, healing people is not all you can do?" Crystal asked. She entered the next room and cheered "Oh! Look, that's a pretty pink one!"

Her cousins and brother trailed in after her into the tropical exhibit of the Brockton Aquarium. Eric rolled his eye at her enthusiasm, presumably feeling that admiring aquatic life was not manly enough. The kid was probably secretly enjoying it below all that grumbling, she thought as she ruffled his hair fondly. He used to love that sort of stuff, but apparently being thirteen was too old to appreciate it anymore...

Amy would not let him skip the weekly outing anyway. Although they had somewhat drifted away in the recent years, the overly serious girl had decided about two months ago that the four of them had to meet a lot more regularly.

New New Wave, Vicky called it, even though they were actually trying to stay away from anything cape related during those reunions.

Frankly, it was quite nice. She was two years older than Vicky and almost four years older than Vicky and Eric, and yet she was having a lot of fun on those small excursions. They even had additional allowance dedicated to it, as their parents fully approved of their increased closeness. Everybody benefited from it.

Eric had an opportunity to chat excitedly with Vicky about whatever TV show he had watched recently. Vicky was kind, full of life, and a lot smarter than people gave her credit for. Amy tended to be a lot more serious and prone to dry humor, but she made visible efforts to stay positive and avoid talking or even thinking about her studies. She made for a clever conversation partner despite her youth.

Of course, they sometime broached some graver subjects. They were no quite at the point of fully sharing their feelings and insecurities with each other, but they were getting there. Amy had taken a significant step into that direction as she had thrown an information bomb at them earlier. Something she was quite sure none of their parents were aware of.

"Yup. More like bio tinkering. When I heal I'm actually only using a fragment of my power. Also, I could heal brains, but I've decided to stay away from it for now. Because _bio tinkering_!" Amy answered nonchalantly. Her blasé attitude didn't fool them. They could feel the uncertainty radiating from her.

"Do Mom and Dad know?" Vicky queried anxiously.

"No. I'm afraid Carol might not be very understanding."

Crystal winced at that. In the previous outings, Amy had somewhat opened up about her relationship with their aunt, and it sounded far from perfect. That she called her Carol and not Mom should have tipped them off long ago, though.

"It's not ideal," Eric concurred, "What with Blasto leaving the Bay a few days ago to settle in Boston, and the PRT director being an Ellisburg survivor..."

Everyone stared at him blankly.

"What?" he justified, cheeks coloring, "I like to stay informed! I browse parahumans online. Sue me!"

"Never mind," Crystal took over. "We get your reservations and we'll keep it a secret if your really want to. But you have to tell us _everything_ , alright?

Amy's shoulders sagged in relief.

"Thanks guys, I mean it. Really. And I'll catch you up on what I've been doing. I'm not about to go Nilbog on you, I promise."

"Oh come on," Vicky chided her. "You though we'd let you down? You have to know better, sis! Come on here!"

She drew her into a hug despite her protests.

"Vicky, let me go!" she spluttered. "We're in public!"

"There is no wrong place for sisterly display of affection!" her sister answer dramatically, as Crystal chuckled at the sight of her usually stoic cousin acting all flustered.

"I have a question," Eric began as they finally moved on to the next room. "Can you also use your power on yourself or was that limitation true?"

"No, unfortunately, I can't see myself at all. It's very annoying!" Amy answered. "If only ..."

She trailed off, staring at the circular water tank in front of them. In it, a massive jellyfish was floating above a small replica of a coral reef. The rest of them were also in awe of the deadly looking creature, but there was an additional spark of enlightenment in the healer's eye.

"I wonder..." she muttered as her gaze followed the lines of the jellyfish's filaments intertwining with the maze of coral in the tank. Suddenly she grinned. "Scratch that. I may have an idea. Stay cool. It might sound slightly disturbing."

Crystal had a hunch about what idea the exhibit had just given her young cousin. She really, really hoped that she was wrong about it.


	5. Chapter 5 : The Host

Disclaimers:

1) This story is set in the Wormverse, which is owned by Wildbow. Thanks for letting me use it.

2) I will follow canon as closely as I can. However it's been a long time since I've read Worm, don't hesitate to correct me.

3) This disclaimer is shamelessly plagiarized from ack1308. Literally nothing here is original. Really.

I-I-I-I

"It's still too big" Amy declared with a disappointed sigh. She had her hand submerged in a glass jar filled with water, one of her fingers making contact with the top of the lone purple jellyfish in the container.

Vicky sat next to her on the brittle grass of Aunt Sarah's garden. Eric was standing, looking over Amy's shoulder with an intrigued expression on his face. Crystal had opted to quietly lie down and enjoy the summer heat a few feet away from them. Amy could see her chest go up and down, a little bit slower every time as she was starting to fall asleep.

"It's always going to be too big," Victoria interjected. "I don't get why everyone is okay with this. Are you seriously going to put this thing into your neck?"

"Not as it is, no. I've spent two month on this and it's still not ready!" Amy lamented despondently.

"Plus, it's not fundamentally weird, the concept has been used countless time in science fiction novels!" Eric added.

"Really?" Vicky lightened up a bit.

"Yes! Of course, those stories are mostly about mind control or brain eating parasites..."

His cousin dry heaved.

"Eric. Not helping!" Amy chided dryly. She then turned to look at her sister.

"Come on, it's perfectly safe. The jelly fish won't be some kind of alien. It cannot even _use_ its own filaments. It cannot move them or do anything with them, really. It's probably not even aware that they exist. Instead of letting it autonomously feed on my excess fat, which was very tempting both for the beauty of a complete symbiotic organism and the lack of need to watch my weight, I have to supply it with biomass manually. It needs my power to feed and move, or even simply survive the absence of sea water."

"Can't you just eat or inject yourself with micro organisms and work with those?" Eric asked.

"There are two problems with that approach, my dear cousin. The first one is that my power seems to consider them as part of me, therefore blocks my access to them. Even if I could find a workaround, I would have to operate on those organisms one by one, as my power processes complexity but not quantity. I takes me far less time to deal with a single big organism than with countless tiny ones."

"Hence the horror-movie alien controlling tentacle stuff." Eric nodded sagely.

"Yes. Hence that." Amy acquiesced dryly. "I will leave its head partially out of my body, and use my power to map and use the filaments as the ultimate surgery tool."

"So, what's left to do?" he asked.

"Well, in the past month, I've altered it so that the filaments can be moved like microscopic mechanical arms by simply shifting a bit of mass around with my power. I got rid of everything I wouldn't need, essentially cutting away all of that to make it smaller. I have enough filaments to spread through my entire body, and diagnose it. Once I get used to that, I'll be able to do actual work, such as absorbing damaged or infected cells through the filaments, assimilating them as biomass or ejecting it outside, and injecting healthy or improved replacement cells instead. It's essentially the ultimate MRI scanner coupled with an army nano-scalpels that double as organic 3d printers. The only thing actually left to do is to shrink the filaments enough that they can easily move through my body."

"But it's still less efficient than using your actual power directly on people, right?" Vicky interjected.

"Well, mostly, but there is an added benefit even to that..."

Amy grinned and beckoned them closer. She cast a hesitant glance at Crystal, and elected to let her sleep when she saw the blissful smile on her face. They would catch her up on it later. What she had to say was important, but no urgent. Seeing that she had Vicky and Eric's full attention, she started to speak.

"I've told you both how I've established that my power has its own aims and urges, right? Yes, Eric, I know that you're not convinced, and I also have no idea whether other powers are like that as well. However I've done a great deal of investigating on my own, and I know I'm not wrong. Also, what have you read about tinkers on PHO?"

"That they have those urge to build that they can't ignore, yes, I see your point."

"So, I've had to basically fight my own power every step of the way. For now, I've mostly let it take over for healing, and I've given it a great deal of leeway to get my jellyfish up and running as soon as possible. I've however managed to reign it in when I work on spiders, and I've successfully managed to force my power to help me make stable, reproducible, and _understandable_ modifications."

"Right, the spiders, you've told us about them"

"That's actually one of the things I like about this," Vicky added, "Our house is 99% spider free now."

"So basically, I'm taming my tinker component. And I've started to exploit it already! It has given me tidbits of data that I haven't found anywhere in medical journals! I suspect that mainstream tinkers who have been able to mass produce items are similar to me : people with a preexisting knowledge of the field, who got particularly miffed at the easy shortcuts provided by their power."

Everyone looked pensive at that. Amy noticed that Crystal had actually awoken and was listening as well. Perhaps she had sensed the change of topics even in her sleep! She had after all been the most intrigued when Amy had revealed what she had studied of her power.

"I think the tinker power might have been a limit in and of itself. After all, the blaster/thinker power that lets me affect deeply and broadly any living organism that I come in touch with is pretty overpowered on its own. If I had become dependent on it, the tinker part might have sneakily restricted me. Because, what if it doesn't know everything? Or what if it deliberately hides knowledge from me ? And even worse, what if it lies to me, or tries manipulate me?"

"So, how does this answer my original question?" Vicky said after a moment of silence. "Does this make you more efficient at healing other people?"

"Simple, my power is baffled by what I'm doing!" Amy declared triumphantly. "At least that's how I see it. I've established it is deliberately preventing me from affecting myself, but every preliminary test I've done in this latest project has worked. The tinker component is content to assist me in altering the jellyfish, but it doesn't understand its purpose. It doesn't see how it will indirectly help me heal myself. Through that medium, it gets confused and loses sight of the big picture. I don't!"

At that she cackled in glee, and had to pause and take a breath to resume her explanation.

"Therefore in the future, if I'll have a way to bypass my power's restrictions if it tries to prevent me from helping someone."

"That's rather far fetched," Crystal raised. "Do you have any reason to believe your power wouldn't let you heal someone?"

"Well, it _does_ refuse to affect me."

They nodded pensively in response. It would perhaps turn out to be mere paranoia in the end, but in the meantime, Amy was pretty sure that she had blown their minds. Worth it anyway! Now, how to shrink those filaments down to around ten nanometers...

I-I-I-I

"Come on, Vicky, hurry up!" Amy begged.

It was a beautiful Friday of the end of June, and their parents as well as Aunt Sarah and Uncle Neil where going to New York for the weekend. Some thing to do with the protectorate, as well as an opera thing, she couldn't quite remember.

What she did remember, was that her "auxiliary control system" (aka her jellyfish, but she needed a name that wouldn't freak her sister out) had been ready for one _full_ week, and that she hadn't been able to test it yet. She had received a stern warning from Crystal not to attempt it without the four of them.

However, they were going to spend the weekend with their cousins, and Amy _would_ test things _tonight_!

"Sure, sure, excuse me if I'm not eager to see my sister stick and parasitic monstrosity into her brain..." came the dry answer from the next room.

"First of all, it's not a parasite! It can't survive off me! It's only nominally alive, and just so that my power can affect it!" Amy whined. "Also, come on, you _know_ it's not going into my brain at all!" _Yet_ she added silently. She would need more time to get her used to _that_ idea...

With a few more friendly jibes and remarks they managed to get out of the house and on the bus. Timed passed in a blur, and soon enough, they were sitting in circle on the floor of Crystal's room.

"Alright, I'm just going to go ahead and do it," Amy declared.

She opened the glass jar, and delicately scooped up the jellyfish. It didn't really look like anything anymore, a simple ball of jelly about the size of a fingernail. The filaments were retracted inside the organism's body to avoid tearing them : the downside of having made them approximately the width of DNA as that she would have to constantly maintain them with her power or risk having them destroyed by the barest of motions. Fortunately she had had the foresight to make them safely dissolvable by her own body.

She picked up a knife, sterilized with the flame from a lighter, and made a tiny incision into her neck. Then she took a deep breath, and laid the blob of jelly on it. As she gently pressed it into it, she used her power to deploy stronger filaments into the wounded flesh to lock the organism into place.

She let her hands drop back into her lap, the jelly remained stuck to the wound. Vicky sucked in a breath but kept quite.

She closed her eyes. And then the magic happened. She started to spread out the filaments.

She was imperceptibly shifting mass around within the tendrils to make them burrow into herself. She let her power do the heavy lifting and calculations for that. All the while, she was also using her ability to analyze everything that came in contact with the filaments through pressure and microscopic interactions. After a while, she started to connect some sensations to specific objects. She got a feel for red cells and vessels, muscle fiber, and all sort of internal tissue.

She moved very carefully. After all, a single forceful movement might split DNA and possibly give her cancer! She had deliberately kept that particular risk from the others, obviously…

Her power helped her piece things together at an increasing speed. She might have forgotten to breathe in the mere seconds that it had taken.

Gradually, she could see. It was unlike anything she had ever felt. Even her first use of her power had not had that effect on her. She remembered the first time she had seen the stars in the sky, gradually appearing as her eyes had become used to the darkness.

It was all that and a million time better! She fought the urge to squeal as detailed map of her own body started to blur into focus.

Yet she did not linger, she would have time to do that later. She focused on her tiny wound, and preformed her first act of self healing.

It was similar to when she elected to manually heal people instead of letting her power reset everything, but even slower. She had to find the swelling, the ruptured blood vessels, absorb the damaged cells, and rebuild the parts that had to be replaced.

BUT. IT. FREAKING. WORKED!

Gradually, the wound closed, held shut and repaired by microscopic thread. It finally vanished, the only hint of the ex-jellyfish being a tiny slightly purple mole.

She opened her eyes. The others looked back at her, holding their breath. She smirked.

"It's on, baby!"

Everyone cheered.

And it was just the beginning. She had _plans_.

I-I-I-I

A.N : I put "OP Amy" in the description, and I mean it. She'll encounter trouble around the way, but she will not lack personal power. Expect her defiance and study of her own power to soon extend to other powers.

Coming next : tune up, small timeskip and endbringer action, and then she'll step into the game properly back in Brockton Bay.


	6. Chapter 6 : Interlude aka Sexy Nurse

Disclaimers:

1) This story is set in the Wormverse, which is owned by Wildbow. Thanks for letting me use it.

2) I will follow canon as closely as I can. However it's been a long time since I've read Worm, don't hesitate to correct me.

3) This disclaimer is shamelessly plagiarized from ack1308. Literally nothing here is original. Really.

A short interlude.

I-I-I-I

"It's too small" Amy protested with a squeak. "What the hell, Vicky? I'm still thirteen! There's no way I'm going to wear that!"

"Come, on sis, it's cute," her sibling answered from outside the changing room. "It's for your patients! You're gonna heal their souls as well! Tell you what, you go for that outfit, and if I see a boy I find worthy of your attention, I'll break his legs near the hospital..."

An other client broke into giggles further in the shop. Amy's blush intensified both in self-consciousness and at her sister's shamelessness. Vicky was starting to get well known in Brockton Bay, and she was sure that more than a few people were listening in! Something else occurred to her.

"Wait, where's the rest?" she asked with more than a little apprehension.

"I've given you everything you need! Come out! Let me see!" her sister yelled from the other side.

"Are you serious?" she spluttered. "There's no way I'm going into public wearing just _that_!"

"Alright, don't worry, I'm coming in."

"Wait-"

A hand quickly grabbed the curtain, pulled it slightly, and her sister slipped in. She yelped. More laughter came from the shop. The changing room was far too small for two people, and she awkwardly collapsed backward on the bench as her sister pushed into her to get the curtain closed.

They could barely breathe, let alone see her outfit. Vicky flashed her the trademark unapologetic I-didn't-think-this-through Glory girl smile.

"I didn't think this through!" she said cheerfully.

Figures.

Her only response was an indignant huff.

"Come on, forgive me? If it helps, from what I can see, you're looking real sexy here, sis! It'll be great! Take a leap of faith!"

"I don't want to look _sexy_!" Amy hissed, doing her best to ignore the warm feeling at the compliment. "I want to look _responsible_. I want doctors to listen to me, and I want to project authority. I especially don't want to be even remotely associated with impulsiveness in the eyes of the PRT. You know _why_!"

"Alright, chill," Vicky chuckled. She handed her a bundle of clothes. "I come with an offer of peace. This one is a good idea."

"Really?" she watched her distrustfully. "You haven't had many of those in the past month..."

"Hey, you're the one who's rejected all the designs we've proposed! You didn't want the nearly all white tunic and cloak Mom suggested,"

"It made me look like a nun" Amy interjected.

"Maybe, but you also didn't like any of my own proposals : sexy nurse, sexy doctor, sexy lab assistant, sexy-"

"Jeez, I wonder if there's a common theme here that got all those rejected..."

"What? _Sexy_?" Vicky asked with a strangled gasp! "Come on, be reasonable! We're New Wave so you'll have to wear _some_ white, and you don't want to look like a saint, so you will have to look nice somehow! You can't have your cake and hit it!"

"That's not how the expression goes! It doesn't even make sense like that!"

"Is too! And it does make sense : if you hit your cake you can't eat it." She paused thinking hard about something. "Or you'd have to pick up the splatter. And that would be unsanitary, stupid!"

"Some days I wonder whether your power is actively melting your brain." Amy answered dryly.

"Don't be mean." her sister chided. "Now, look at what your favorite sister found for you!"

Amy unfolded the clothes, wisely not making the observation that she was Vicky's _only_ sister. There was no winning here.

"Is it Japanese?" she asked.

"Yes, it's a kimono. It's a bit different in style, but it would be a nice touch, I think. My idea is : we get you an all white one, with sleek black lining, and tightly adjusted, and yes that last part is non negotiable. We get the cloth belt in red, so it will give it a little color and nicely show off your waist."

"Vicky," Amy protested.

"No, you've got to compromise! You'll like it, I swear. It will be feminine but elegant! Refined! Come on, this is perfect!"

"And the coat?" she asked with a sigh.

"Yes, the crucial style part! It will be loose, always open at the front and it will go nearly all the way to your feet at the back so that it floats behind you, like a cloak!"

"What color?"

"Bleach! I mean, pure white, with a huge red cross at the back!" Victoria beamed at her. "It's gonna be awesome!"

"Right… Alright… Yes, I could see that…" Amy answered pensively, then with more enthusiasm. "Yes, that looks good! Thank you Vicky! Now can we please get out of here?"

Vicky squealed, hugged her, and rushed out to give a specific order to the shopkeeper. Once again, Amy ignored the warmth in her belly at the affectionate gesture and got herself back into her comfortable jeans and baggy sweater. She made her way to the counter. She had been right, a few other customers had gathered and were peeking not so discreetly at the two of them.

Embarrassed, she quickly put the clothes she had tried out at the end of the counter, muttered a quick thank you to the shopkeeper and strode toward the exit to get some air, leaving her sister to wrap things up.

As she walked away, she heard her exlaim. "Oh, no, don't put this one back, we'll take it as well! She's definitely gonna want to wear it someday for a boy!" Ears burning, she rushed outside. _Dammit, Vicky!_

I-I-I-I

A.N. You might be thinking "aizen espada uniform". You might be right.

Also, that chapter is dedicated to you jdboss1


	7. Chapter 7 : Transhumanism

Disclaimers:

1) This story is set in the Wormverse, which is owned by Wildbow. Thanks for letting me use it.

2) I will follow canon as closely as I can. However it's been a long time since I've read Worm, don't hesitate to correct me.

3) This disclaimer is shamelessly plagiarized from ack1308. Literally nothing here is original. Really.

If you see the word spaghetti in this chapter, it's a typo.

I-I-I-I

Sitting in the their backyard, Ames took a deep breath and glared on the thin iron rod in her hands. She suddenly lifted it right below eye level, and with a grunt she visibly applied all her strength into it. Her arms quivered and a lone bead of sweat rolled down her chin. Excruciatingly slowly, inch by inch, the rod began to yield. As soon as it bent into a right angle, she let it drop and collapsed on her floor, gulping for air.

Her cheeks were flushed from the effort, but she had an uncharacteristically proud smile on her face. Not her trademark mad scientist creepy smirk, but the self-satisfied grin of the victorious! She lifted a wobbly arm into the air and yelled in childish awe. "I did it! I'm super strong!"

As much as Victoria relished her baby sister's rare bouts of innocence and as much as she didn't want to rain on her parade, she couldn't prevent a snort from escaping her. Ames looked at her quizzically. Instead of answering right away, she nodded at the tiny rod she had bent. She then shot a smirk at her.

"Cute. I believe no more than half of the world's population could claim to have accomplished a similar feat of strength..."

She _floated_ closer to emphasize her point. Ames dissipating flush came back in force, this time because of embarrassment. Victoria internally nodded at herself in approval. She was getting very good at fulfilling her sacred sisterly duty. Or Ames was just that easily flustered. Either way, point to her.

"Not everyone is naturally inclined to turn into a Brute" she replied.

"You say that like it's a bad word," Victoria chided. "You wish you were one. Then perhaps you'd be able to do some real damage!"

Oops, wrong choice of word here, especially after the dressing down she had received from Mom for the destruction she had caused a few days ago while chasing Über. She saw Ames hesitate for half a second before opting not to go for the obvious retort.

"I'll catch up someday anyway." Ames declared instead with a huff.

Oh! Sparing your older sister's feeling, are you? Love you too!

"Of course you will, sweetie, of course you will", Victoria said as if encouraging a toddler.

Her sister looked even more indignant at that, and was opening her mouth to answer when a growl interrupted her. Vicky shot her a delighted look and nearly squealed.

"That's so cute. You've managed to bend that tiny thing, and now you're all hungry and tired! Come on, let's go and get something to eat! Then perhaps I'll convince you to take a nap. I am responsible for my baby sister's wellbeing, after all!"

She grabbed her hand and dragged her back to the house.

"Just kill me now," Ames muttered.

She guffawed.

I-I-I-I

Alone in her room, Amy meditated. Well, she didn't empty her mind or whatever, but she filled it with awareness of her own body. Which, for her, meant significantly more than for the run-of-the-mill yoga guru.

In the past few weeks, her "network" as she now called the heavily modified jellyfish, had needed to be remade three times. Twice because she had lost awareness of it in her sleep and most of the filaments had disintegrated and been digested by her body, which did make her run a slight fever. Once because she had found an even better way to miniaturize them.

She had become a lot quicker at crafting her internal network, now creating most of the tendrils directly in herself from her internal fat reserves. She had successfully diagnosed a lot of her body's issues. A potential appendicitis. A fault line in her bones where she had broken her wrist years before. Vitamins deficiency. She was far from understanding everything, though, and there was still some sort of hormonal imbalance she couldn't quite comprehend.

Indeed an interesting side effect of going through the network was that her power helped her piece the vision together, but no more. It gave her an instantaneous map of herself, but it didn't offer any form of analysis or suggestion.

While others would have been annoyed, Amy felt vindicated! Learning things the hard way was useful, at the very least because she needed it to operate on herself. Fixing internal bleeding was laughably easy with her power, but if she ever had to do it on herself she would need to have the appropriate knowledge. It was thrilling!

Similarly, when she decided to do some very minor upgrades on herself, her power didn't swamp her with suggestions. It judged her own ideas devoid of use, or impossible, while it approved of the exact same upgrade on other organisms.

Therefore she could calmly ponder the consequences of her upgrades without external interference. She didn't get headaches from this, and it didn't add to her innate temptation of obsessive self improvement. She vowed never to do on another human being something she hadn't tested on herself, free from her power's insidious influence.

She had finished her in depth analysis of muscles upgrades, tested different variations on insects and rodents. Fortunately, it seemed that the thinker component of her power had actually help her learn a lot faster than possible.

She had cautiously decided to test a very subtle upgrade on her arms. It had taken her a few days to get the hang of applying it through her network, but she had managed it, and finally tested the result this morning.

Her cheeks reddened imperceptibly before she pushed those thoughts away.

The result was perfect. She would observe the downsides in the following days, and the get started up on slowly improving herself.

She had used civil engineering softwares to model a more optimal bone mesh structure that would give her skeleton more solidity without losing any flexibility. She had planned for it to be lighter to make up for her other upgrades, but she had found that bones were already actually quite light, making up merely 15% of a person's total body mass.

Her new bone structure would need to be manually implemented as she grew as she had mostly discarded the natural growth process to optimize the upgrade. Yes, she would be in big troubles if she ever lost her power before adulthood, and even afterwards any fracture would heal unnaturally slowly on their own, but she had managed to make her bones fifteen time harder to break, which was a good trade off in her eyes. She had avoided using unnatural alloys altogether in order to avoid looking weird on tinker-tech security scanner.

She just had to avoid any coma during a growth spurts.

She was also working on quite a few other upgrades, such as human tissue with increased resistance to cutting, tearing, and heat. She also had an idea for a more efficient shock absorbing mix of liquid and tissue that she could not only use for the rest of her body, but also around her brain, which was quickly appearing to be the most complex part of her to protect. That might give her some resistance to concussions at the very least.

And those were the designs that she had thought up on her own. She was still milking her power for all it was worth, and pieces by pieces she drafted blueprints that would have awed most surgeons. She would get started on those when she had reached the limits of regular science, and only if she had managed to fully dismantle her power's suggestions.

She would be careful to never make herself tinker-tech. She would turn tinker-tech into science first, with her excruciation efforts, and then apply the science to herself.

She doubted she could have done it anyway. On other, yes, but on herself, if she didn't know exactly what she was going for, she couldn't go forward. And since she refused to use on others things she hadn't tested on herself, it rendered that point moot.

She would upgrade herself slowly but steadily. And she might conveniently forget to mention the growth spurt / coma hazard to the others.

I-I-I-I

"You want to do what?" Carol asked, startled, finally lifting her eyes from the legal documents she had been reading.

"I'd like to get into a self defense class."

"You're the _healer_ , Amy!" Carol answered, baffled.

"I'm also the weakest member of new wave by far. I'm a weak link. Just because the gangs have been polite about it out of fear of the protectorate, doesn't mean that will be always the case! Villains are not known to be fully rational! I'd be safer, and that would help everyone."

"That's.. not a bad point" she answered slowly. "Find a good club, and I'll sign you up for it. You and Victoria both, actually..."

"Vicky?" Amy asked, surprised both at the suggestion and the lack of resistance. "You think she needs it?"

"It would be educational. She might one day encounter a stronger opponent, or weaker ones who could rely on martial arts to keep up. She might do more watching than fighting, of course, but she will still learn. And perhaps it would also teach her to hold back a little..." Carol trailed off with a sigh. "She'll have to be careful though. I'll be counting on you!" she concluded seriously.

"Ah- alright" Amy answered, slightly unsettled by the show of trust.

"Of course, I also know how you two are… There's no way I could _keep_ her _from_ going, when her little sister would be fighting and might get hurt!" Carol let out a chuckle.

"Oh come on!" Amy complained, throwing her hands up and turning away to leave the room. "You're not going to start too! And she's not _that_ bad!"

"Yes she is… Yes. She. is." Came the dry answer.

I-I-I-I

It had taken some work, but she had managed to find a class held by grim ex marines. She had needed to enroll in a standard martial arts course as well, as learning specific moves wasn't the focus here. It was more about how to use everything you already knew to take down your opponent fast and hard. In a way, it revolved around very short term strategy rather than physical training.

She could learn a lot from that class alone, but a jujitsu or karate class would let her practice a few techniques again and again until she could put some real power and speed in them. It would also help her train her stamina and reactivity. Then she could put the marines' teachings to good use.

"There go six hours of my week," Amy sighed.

Basically, she had shifted her schedule around to have two hours of combat every evening she wasn't at the hospital.

On the plus side, she had started to get strong enough to train with the adults, which would speed things up a lot. She figured she would upgrade her physical strength to the point where she would easily keep up with the men who had enrolled with her, and then she would need to find some sort of limiter to stay at that level while in class.

She had a few plans already prepared to use her _network_ to stave off exhaustion without eliminating the pain so as to take full advantage of the lessons. She would also shamelessly help her body recover swiftly. After all, she didn't need to train her muscles when she could design them.

She hadn't been able to find a limiter for her sister, unfortunately. As far as she could tell, Vicky's power was absolute bullshit, and her strength wasn't even remotely connected to her muscles. It all happened inside her brain, and Amy wasn't going to go in there. Ever.

Similarly, she hadn't found a solution to stimulate her own muscle memory. As it turned out, the term was misleading, and the phenomenon it described also happened in the brain rather than in the actual muscles. She had been a bit more tempted to send her network into her brain to at least witness the process, but she had resisted her curiosity.

Still, it had been a pretty rewarding undertaking, and she estimated that she would be a Brute 2 with the appropriate skills to make the most of it by her 14th birthday.

One question remained : what was she actually going to do with all that?

I-I-I-I

Thank you Kaiya Azure, jdboss1, approximationOfHumanity, and guest for your reviews


	8. Chapter 8 : Madison

Disclaimers:

1) This story is set in the Wormverse, which is owned by Wildbow. Thanks for letting me use it.

2) I will follow canon as closely as I can. However it's been a long time since I've read Worm, don't hesitate to correct me.

3) This disclaimer is shamelessly plagiarized from ack1308. Literally nothing here is original. Really.

Action… begin!

I-I-I-I

I-I-I-I

 _A few months later. Madison, December 2010_

"This is it. This is where cape enter history. This is what I've been preparing for."

She looked over around at the preschool hall turned emergency hospital. Blood packs, IVs and medical supplies stacked in a side of the room, currently being double checked by the conventional medics who would stabilize minor capes and stitch up smaller wounds.

There was a rough yellow line on the ground that separated ordinary treatment from parahuman one. Amy was standing on the other side of that line with the few other healing capes that had showed up.

Their side was barren in comparison. There was a simple stack of bottled water on a desk, but not much else. On the floor, arrows indicated the paths to leave clear for the medical personnel to roll patients in and out.

A huge red cross was painted in the middle. It was where teleporters would drop top priority patients. They were to ensure those could survive at all cost, and if possible rejoin the battlefield. The others would be dropped on rolling stretchers in an adjacent room, and a thinker would orchestrate their dispatch into the appropriate section of their improvised operation room.

She noted with a certain amount of satisfaction that she was the one positioned the closest to the priority red cross. It seemed she had been judged the most capable healer on hand. Immediately, that thought was followed by a wave of shame at her own attitude when she remembered that their healer shortage meant less heroes going home.

Then it also dawned on her that people would count on her to save some _very_ , _very_ important people, and she felt anxiety rise within her at the thought.

To try to stave off her fears, she observed the doctors in their own area, and tried to catalog every tool and machine that was brought in. She could name all of them and she remembered the operating procedure for most.

Alright, _that_ she could take pride of without feeling any guilt. Especially when she saw the humorously clueless faces of the parahuman healers when an ECMO circuit was rolled in.

 _That_ satisfaction was something she had worked for, something she deserved. She was effectively the best of both worlds. Well, maybe not the best of both worlds, but the best of one and way above average for the other.

Indeed she estimated she had at least the raw theoretical knowledge of a general practitioner, and perhaps she might rival dedicated surgeons in her current area of expertise, which was mostly muscles and bones. Of course, she had skimped a bit on the legal stuff and she had genuinely never even held a scalpel in her life.

When she thought of it, she was closer to an expert biologist with an unusual understanding of operating protocols. _Maybe she should get started up on getting some of dem PHD..._

She had just managed to let her thoughts wander off to take her mind away from the building tension when her dad came into the room.

"Are you alright, Amy?" he asked.

...and everything rushed back to her and she was thinking about the upcoming battle again. _Dammit_! She wasn't about to tell him that, however.

He had made the effort to actually involve himself for once... He had volunteered to be the one to bring her here and he was inquiring about her state of mind. Sure he had done it at an inconvenient time, but he at least he had tried.

She repressed her annoyance and brought forward the warmth she felt as the rare gesture of concern from her dad. After a second, she felt that she that she could produce a genuine smile. So she did.

 _Operation Positive reenforcement is a go._

"I am now," she answered.

He smiled in return.

 _Worth it!_

His expression fell as the endbringer sirens suddenly shut off. The enemy had arrived.

A man with Indian features walked up to her father and put a hand on his shoulder. That was one of the teleporters, the one who had brought them in. She could never properly remember his name because PHO had taken to calling him "discount Strider". Poor man. He was apparently the second best teleporter _in the World_ , unfortunately his power worked exactly like Strider, but not as well. Hence the derisive nickname.

"Listen Amy, you'll do great okay? I'm sorry we can't be here with you, but we were at the her previous attacks and because we've cut it too close we have to wait another few months. We'll be waiting for your return! You'll be alright! Stay safe!"

He rambled a little bit more, then without a word the teleporter brought him away, and she was left in the tense and silent anticipation of the emergency room. The medics progressively stilled. They had done all the preparations that they could in their limited time. Now, they all just waited for the casualties to start streaming in.

At least they had been set up far enough from the action to be spared the ominous explosive bracelets. They were around eight miles north of Madison. Close enough to be reachable, far enough from the anticipated destruction radius to be safe, statistically speaking.

There was a distant rumble, a rush of wind and debris. Probably from a building being used like a freaking hammer.

The Simurgh had arrived.

There was a brief flash and there was a bleeding man on the red cross. _Time to get to work._

I-I-I-I

"We can't handle that one, devastating internal bleeding, push him to the other side!"

"Blood packs !"

"I need some water here!"

"Come one, man, stay awake, your turn is coming!"

Amy wiped a splatter of blood from her chest. Her eyes stung from her own sweat. She had never felt so utterly exhausted. She finally lifted her hand from Narwhal and made quick gesture of her hand to indicate she was finished.

She lifted her head and briefly, the room spun. Her eyes glazed over, the chatter of the room became unintelligible, she felt like she was floating. Distantly, she wondered how long it had been since the beginning of the battle. Was it days? Was it anywhere close to finished? It had certainly felt like an entire year! Or had it been barely an hour and was she supposed to keep at it for much longer? She didn't care anymore whether they won or not. She just wanted it to be over. Around her, the symphony of yells went on.

"...dead ..."

"...more stitches… internal bleeding..."

"...Alexandria..."

"...Kill me!..."

"… gonna make it?..."

"...greater priority..."

"Panacea?"

"...don't know how… case 53..."

"Panacea!"

Someone suddenly grabbed her shoulder. "Panacea!" the man repeated.

Through an inhuman effort of will she shook herself and forced her eyes to focus. A medic was looking at her in concern. In front of her was a mangled man in a stretcher. She hadn't even seen him arrive. Ah, it was a priority one, she noticed.

"Panacea, are your alright? Should I call another healer? Will you manage to keep going?"

"Yes! Yes. I'm just.. exhausted. I'll be… fine." Her voice was hoarse. _Had she yelled a lot?_

The medic didn't look all that convinced, but nodded anyway.

"This is Skipper. Priority cape."

 _Skipper?_ That was the name she was looking for. _Huh, even that was a downgrade from Strider._ Then she realized the enormity of it.

One of their two major teleporters was down. And badly : she hadn't even recognized his face! She delicately made contact with his skin.

 _Punctured lungs, ...and that's done, collapsed ribcage, done, heart… remade from scratch, the other organs will have to wait, all that remains is…_

 _Shit. Internal bleeding, left cortex, getting worse._

"Brain." She rasped.

"Shit!" The medic echoed her thoughts. He knew enough of her achievements to ask the next relevant question. "Anything the other capes can do? A brain surgeon? We can't afford to lose him!"

"No. Too much, too fast." She answered.

The medic swore, and made to take stretcher away. Even in her exhausted mind, she understood that it might have been a turning point for them. One of their major source of mobility, a person responsible for getting about half of their wounded here, was dying.

Was it worth it? Not healing him simply because of her own rules? Not compromising because she distrusted her power?

Quickly, she considered her dilemma. She had observed some troubling inconsistencies in the past eight months since she had received her powers. First of all, her power definitely tended to hinder her conventional studies of the brain. That was a big strike against it.

She had also regularly asked her powers for suggestion on how to heal one long term coma patient at the hospital, and she had always received ideas that she _felt_ _absolutely_ sure would work. But as her studies shed light on the subject, she had felt some of those ideas were unnecessarily complex. And sure enough, as she had asked her power for them again, the suggestion were imperceptibly different, without explanation. And she still had the _absolute certitude_ those were _The_ ideal solution. Perhaps it was because her power was so advanced that she couldn't understand, but if so, why _change the treatment_?

Paranoid? Perhaps. And maybe if they had been fighting the Behemoth she would have made an exception. But against the Simurgh ? If her power was even slightly disloyal to her, things were _guaranteed_ to go wrong. The endbringer could predict things years forward. What were the odds she hadn't known Skipper would land into her laps?

The Mannequin had been born from Sphere during a Simurgh attack. She wanted no part of a similar redo. More damning, Skipper recovering would be a big win for humanity, and The Simurgh simply didn't do that. What she took, she kept. The world couldn't manage to take back Switzerland and had to wall off the emplacement of her attacks. That was what she _did_!

 _Although…_ She had options, she realized with a start. She might be able to use her personal creation. After all, the damage was massive, but visible. It wasn't a subtle coma or a complicated condition, mostly massive internal bleeding. She could at least stabilize him, give Skipper an opportunity to recover. She didn't have to alter neurons...

Also, she knew that her own power was stumped by her _network_. Perhaps then, The Simurgh wouldn't have expected it either….

"Wait!" she yelled at the medic. He was halfway across the room with the stretcher. "Bring Skipper back!" The man's eyes widened as her expression, and he rushed back with the dying hero.

She slipped a hand into a hidden pocket of her costume and withdrew a tiny petri dish from it. The jelly inside formed a ball that dropped into her hand when she popped the lid open.

With no time for subtlety, she used her power to open a small wound on the side of Skipper's face, and pressed her spare _network_ into it. She expanded the filaments as fast as she dared into his brain, and immediately started reducing the swelling.

 _Please work!_

She rushed to find the ruptured vessel, fixing them with the bare minimum, converting the excess blood into biomass, drawing it into the filaments, and spitting it back out as whatever undamaged cell she was in need of. Most of it was still simply ejected at the point of contact of the network, making the tiny incision look like it was spurting a disproportionate amount of blood.

She felt herself strain as she tried to take it all in, faster and faster, destroying the unwanted pockets of blood. She poured all of herself into the struggle, making trillions of alteration to her network in a split second to spread it without damaging too much, destroying and crafting more cells in a second than she usually did in days, all the while trying to grasp the entire state of her patient's brain at once.

Her power might not understand the purpose, but it reveled in the action. More conciliatory than ever, it proposed thousands upon thousands of changes for her tendrils when she needed to modify some of them, and didn't lash out when she decided that none of them were suitable.

And slowly, very slowly to her perception, Skipper's condition improved. Given how she saw blood flow impossibly sluggishly, however, her perception of time was definitely off. In the end, less than a minute had passed in the real world when she finally finished most of the work.

She wiped her brow. She felt blood inside her mouth. _Biting? No. Nosebleed_.

Had she been successful? Still maintaining contact with the network with one hand, she put her other on her patient's cheek and let her power analyze his condition. She found it humorous that it seemingly didn't manage to make the connection between the image she received through that hand and the one she was piecing together with the other.

 _Stable, despite some very fragile scar tissue. Probable short term memory loss. Potential longer term memory loss. It's super easy to fix this! It is! It is! Elementary! Trust me trust me trust me! You just have to-_

She cut off her power's analysis with wave of relief, not even receiving a headache for once. Her power felt like it was still softly purring in the distance. She looked up only at the medic anxiously watching her.

"I think he's going to make it! I just have to consolidate some of my most hasty patch-ups!"

The man sighed in relief. "How much time do you need?"

"A minute at most, then evacuate him."

"Alright!"

She turned her gaze back into Skipper's brain through. Then she fully processed what she was seeing and her thoughts stuttered to a stop.

 _What was that?_

She was feeling a complex, wide cluster of neurones with her _network_...Impossibly wide, taking at least fifteen time the volume she estimated from an outside perspective! Moving her tendrils into it was bewildering, as if she had plunged a stick into water and its image had distorted, but a hundred times more baffling. The eeriest element of the entire phenomenon, however, was that her direct power gave her a completely mundane picture. It showed it as nothing more than exactly what it looked like from the outside.

For once, it seemed that it was her _network_ that was giving her wacky results, and her power that was being reasonable.

 _Unless…_

She brought the diagrams she had seen of the brain to the front of her mind. Nothing. Then she remembered those she had been given by the PRT as a token of good faith.

There was no mistaking it. The tiny Lovecraft cluster of neurons was situated at the bottom of the Corona Pollentia.

As she was making that realization, Skipper's drew in a gulp of air and opened an eye.

I-I-I-I

Legend was blasting his lasers at the Simurgh who looked dishearteningly unaffected, not even looking at him and keeping her head covered.

"What the hell is it doing?"

Oblivious to what was happening very close to her, Noelle Meinhardt was in a trance, lifting a strange vial of liquid to her lips.

Suddenly The Simurgh swiveled and lifted the wing that was covering her eyes. Then she charged to the north of the city. Fast.

I-I-I-I

I-I-I-I

 **A.N.**

Ooooh, ominous. But it probably just wants to grab a pizza before the place closes.

I've spent a lot more time on this chapter than I had anticipated.


	9. Chapter 9 : Crisis

Disclaimers:

1) This story is set in the Wormverse, which is owned by Wildbow. Thanks for letting me use it.

2) I will follow canon as closely as I can. However it's been a long time since I've read Worm, don't hesitate to correct me.

3) This disclaimer is shamelessly plagiarized from ack1308. Literally nothing here is original. Really.

I-I-I-I

I-I-I-I

"Get a mover to get us there! She's too fast to follow! And keep trying to hinder her!"

Above the wrecked city center of Madison, dozens of capes were desperately flying after The Simurgh. Her change in strategy had been wholly unexpected. Never before had she actively tried to leave the city and go after their medical center.

Perhaps they should have anticipated that kind of move. The creature was all about terror and destabilization! Slaughtering wounded capes as well as their precious few healers would not only make for a dark day, but also multiply casualties in the following endbringer attacks.

A vibration signaled the arrival of new information on his bracelet. Legend looked at the screen.

 _Panacea likely target as major healer._

 _Fourteen other capes on site, including three minor healers._

 _Evacuation under way_

 _Simurgh ETA : 7 seconds_

Dammit! They were not going to make it.

I-I-I-I

To Amy it all happened in a blur. Right as she was having her personal epiphany about the corona Pollentia and a potential lead on the origin of powers, she heard Skipper shift under her hands.

Opening her eyes, she made to slip him a few words of reassurance but she was interrupted by the sound of Dragon's voice coming from another wounded capes' armband. Not from her own patient though, as his right arm and therefore the bracelet attached to it had been sliced off in battle.

"Operating room, The Simurgh is heading to your position, abandon all operations and gather at the priority healing cross. Skipper will evacuate you."

Amy violently trembled at the announcement. _She was supposed to be safe! The Simurgh hardly ever left the bounds of the city it was attacking!_

She shook her head. _No_. No use panicking. She just had to take a deep breath and soldier on. Dragon was handling the retreat. She was very close to the evacuation spot. She just had to wheel her charge with her. After all, it wouldn't do to have done all those efforts just to abandon Skipper!

 _Skipper? Wait, hadn't Dragon said Skipper was going to transport them?_

 _Shit shit shit!_

She fought a wave of vertigo as she stood up and hastily looked around the room, trying to locate one of the functional armbands.

 _There!_

She threw herself on a man lying on a stretcher by the entrance, and fumbled at his bracelet. _What was the word already?_ _Urgent_ _Override? Ah, no it was-_

"Hard override" she yelled into the device. "Skipper down, Skipper _down_! Unconscious here with us! We need Strider!"

The other people in the room, who had until then managed to stay calm, heard her words and started to scream in panic. One of them sprinted out of the room, and at that the floodgates opened as everyone rushed to the exit. Amy stayed, nervously fiddling with the bracelet. She had sat through enough New Wave reunions to know that her best shot was to follow Dragon's instructions.

"Strider unreachable" Dragon voice came three long seconds later. "Hold on tight, Eidolon is attempting to get to you. Do not leave on your own!"

Very few actually heard the advice over the yells and panicked stampede. None heeded it. Half of them were already outside. Amy walked to the window, hypnotized by the spectacle of people chaotically scattering into the street and more than a little overwhelmed by how fast things had gone downhill.

 _The casualty rate was always higher out on the open, but it's probably useless to try and convince them of that._

She also had a sinking feeling that the Simurgh's unusual movements had to do with her own actions. Running wouldn't matter much here for her. Better to pray for another teleporter's arrival.

She squinted at the sky. _There_. She saw a white spot getting bigger, fast. She felt like she was in one of those old westerns, a girl tied to train tracks, reduced to watching her inevitable doom rushing at her.

On the roof of a house close to them, she suddenly saw two people appearing in a flash of light.

 _A man and a woman. Probably Eidolon and Alexandria then. Why didn't they come here straight away? The power Eidolon grabbed had to be line of sight._

She frantically waved at them. She was nearly safe! It would be a close thing, however. The endbringer was close enough that she could see the shape of her many wings, as well as the car size tinker tech device she was dragging with her.

 _What is this thing for anyway?_ She thought distantly.

Unfortunately, she got her answer. Before her would be rescuers could jump again to her position, the machine activated, and space deformed in a two miles radius around them. The roads twisted, a building collapsed, and more importantly, there was a sphere of emptiness around them that looked impenetrable. And Eidolon's ability seemed to be line of sight anyway.

They were all stuck in there! Herself, regular medics, a few healers, a bunch of comatose capes, two thirds of the triumvirate, and the Simurgh.

Her legs quivered and she would have collapsed if not for gravity suddenly taking a momentary leave of absence. It came back in full force a second later and the ceiling groaned above her.

 _This was not going well._

I-I-I-I

Nearby, Alexandria wasn't much more optimistic about their odds as she cursed vocally. She had not anticipated that the dimension breaching tinker tech The Simurgh had assembled and wielded as a weapon against Cauldron would work a second time.

That damned machine had cost them a bunch of power vials, and now it was keeping the two of them trapped with an Endbringer and the near entirety of their medical personnel to protect.

Then as she felt the psychic, mind bending scream of their enemy come back in full force, she realized that there was nowhere to escape it in their improvised prison.

 _That was bad, very bad._

"They are practically lost," Eidolon declared grimly by her side, having reached the same conclusion. "It could take minutes for us to get a way out of there. The best we can do is focus on our own survival here."

"So we should give up protecting the healers?" she asked incredulously.

"We don't have much of a choice here. We can't fight her on our own. This might very well have been a trap for us. With the Simurgh, there is no winning, only limiting our losses. Help them if you can, but don't take risks. None of them have our resistance to the Scream anyway, they won't last long."

Alexandria cursed again. She reluctantly nodded and flew off the building. Eidolon followed, all the while blasting plasma projectiles at the Simurgh who was effortlessly dodging those.

Briefly, she she saw a lone girl standing by the window of the medical room, eyes wide, staring at her retreating form in despair. She repressed the surge of frustration and anger at being put in this position.

Then a compressed ball of cars trucks, lampposts and trees was telekinetically dropped onto the building and she lost sight of her in the collapsing debris.

I-I-I-I

Pain and panic had completely overwhelmed her. There was rubble all around her, pressing down on her body. A ringing in her ears left her absolutely deaf to her surroundings and she wasn't entirely sure which way was up. She was inhaling more dust than actual air.

She tried to push off a block of stone that was preventing her from breathing properly. She brought her arms between her chest and the slab but she barely managed to move it at all.

 _If she could just make enough room to get her knees under the stone, she might be able to roll it off her._

With an incredible effort of will, she lifted the stone again and tried to bring her knees up. Nothing happened. She gave up and had to keep her breaths shallow and short again. Why were her legs not responding? Could she feel them? Yes. Move them? Not really. Why? It didn't matter, she was going to die soon anyway, she lamented.

 _No, she had to stay focused! Let's sort through things methodically. Could she move her toes?_

Then a light bulb went off in her head.

 _Stupid! The network!_

Instead of completing her rudimentary diagnosis, she dived into the _network_ in her neck. Fortunately the months she had spent fiddling with it had left her capable of maintaining it subconsciously, and it was still mostly functional.

In a few seconds she absorbed enough of her own biomass to fully reconstruct her favorite tool, and she hurriedly activated it.

 _Alright. Systems check!_

She giggled. Wait, was it funny? Okay, she was probably in shock. Moving on.

 _Spine, kidney, abs, left ankle were her main concerns._

She hastily fixed those. It took around thirty seconds, at a pace she had never imagined achieving in her wildest dream. Fortunately her enhancements had spared her the worst of it. She should literally have had all of her limbs fractured, a crushed skull, and instead of tearing halfway into her abs, the metallic rod sticking out from the piece of wall above her should have fully impaled her. She should have been dead already.

Also, having half a ton of stone on her chest should have suffocated her instead of merely making breathing difficult.

She focused back on her current situation. She was roughly patched up, now she had to get free. She manually pumped adrenalin into her limbs and with a grunt, she finally managed to pull the heavy stone slab off her.

 _Will whoever is screaming just SHUT UP?_

It was quite strange that she would here that strident voice when her ear drums didn't seem to be functional. She started at the thought, and with a few additional tendrils of her _network_ she fixed her own hearing.

Soon enough, she could catch the muted sounds of the ongoing battle. It seemed Alexandria and Eidolon were still going all out, as she very much doubted the angelic endbringer would even momentarily be bothered by one of the medics. Or perhaps other capes had managed to reach them?

The screaming woman was still audible, though, and her addled brain finally managed to make the connection to the most horrifying of the enemy's abilities. She nearly yielded to despair. That meant that even if she survived this, she might not be able to go home. The PRT was very wary of anyone who had been subject to the Scream.

Even as tears pooled in her eyes, she tried to remain calm. She had... how much time was it already? Ugh. Around fifteen minutes of exposure. After that, her life would essentially be over.

She saw a body a bit further away in the rubble. She ran toward it and took the man's pulse. Dead. On his wrist was one of the armbands. It apparently hadn't detonated as the cape wearing it was registered as deceased anyway. She looked at the last message.

 _Simurgh arriving at the medical outpost_

 _Tinker tech apparently activating._

 _(16min ago)_

She felt icy dread flow down her spine.

 _It was already too late!_

Sure, it wasn't an exact science. And exposure that short wouldn't make her a true Simurgh time bomb. But it might significantly affect her. Other victims had shown bouts of uncontrollable rage and irrationality from even shorter interactions with her.

At the very least, if she was ever allowed to see her family again, she would be under heavy supervision. And eventually, the protectorate and the PRT would find out the extent of her power. A potential Nilbog exposed to the Simurgh... She would be locked away forever at best! No wonder the endbringer had stopped paying attention to her. She was over.

 _Vicky…_

No! She refused that fate! She still had too much to do, too much to learn. She had been on the verge of achieving an unprecedented level of understanding of powers. She had been on her way to take an active part into the protection of her city!

She needed to be there for her airhead of a sister! She needed to be there to help her loyal and supportive cousins. Even her dad needed her, especially after he had finally started to open up.

She refused to yield. She. Would. Come. back!

As if mocking her, the sphere of nothingness started to slowly become transparent around them, progressively showing their surrounding again, presumably realigning with the outside world. The sky became visible, as well as the many heroes flying in wait outside.

 _NO! NO!_

She got up and frantically looked for a place to hide. Somewhere the protectorate wouldn't find her. She could stealthily leave afterwards and claim she had managed to get away before the endbringer had arrived! She didn't wear an armband, so they couldn't claim otherwise. It would take work, but she could convince them…

Then she stumbled as she recalled that she had seen Alexandria look directly at her. A thinker with an eidetic memory. _Damn it!_

 _Okay, this was still salvageable_ , she told herself even as hopelessness rose within her. _Way harder, and probably a year of isolation or so, but-_

She stopped suddenly at the sight of a familiar cape bleeding on the ground.

 _Skipper._

The endbringer had done a number on him. _Again_. Yet, somehow, he was still breathing. Not for much longer, but he was.

Trembling, she brought her hands to his face. _Suggestions_ slowly came to her on ways to save him, but there was no way she would take them, especially after being herself affected by the Simurgh. Instead, she focused on the remnants of her spare _network_. Because the brain wasn't as mobile as the rest of the body, large parts of it were still functional, even after more than fifteen minutes of not being constantly repaired by her power.

She didn't need all of it. She had an idea, but she had no guarantee that it would work. She would try anyway.

 _Sorry, you deserved better._

She swiftly moved ions around so as to flood his brain with weak currents of electricity, effectively sending him into a seizure as those discharges spread around.

She suppressed her wince as she saw him open his eyes and spasm and she grabbed his head tightly. She brought her mouth to his ear, and yelled.

"RETREAT! RETREAT! TAKE US AWAY!"

The sky lightened above them. She would be spotted soon. Despair filled her. She tried again

"HOME! GO HOME PLEASE! SAFE! HOME!"

And one last attempt, sobbing.

"HOME!"

The world was flipped upside down. The temperature was way higher than it was supposed to be. She was crouching inside an unfamiliar house. An Indian man ran to her.

She passed out.

I-I-I-I

I-I-I-I

 **A.N.**

Thanks you guys for your reviews. And your follows! And your favorites!

I'm taking your corrections into account as soon as I find some time to revisit the previous chapters :)


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